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When you ’re standing on Earth ’s surface , it ’s easy to forget that our major planet ishurtling around the Dominicus at more than 67,000 miles per hour ( 107,800 km / h ) . And it ’s even easy to leave that there are seven other planet also micturate their way around our home star at similar breakneck speed , or that all eight have been ceaselessly circling thesolar systemfor million of long time .
But what might really blow your mind is finding out how many trips around the sun each major planet has under its belt . This may seem like a foxy matter to calculate , but because the planet ' reach have remained largely unaltered for most of their existence , all it takes is a turn of basic mathematics .
The orbital period of the solar system’s planets varies widely.
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Thesolar systemwas give birth around 4.6 billion years ago , when the Dominicus began to form from a cloud of detritus leave behind by prior astral explosion . Around 4.59 billion days ago , the elephantine planets — Jupiter , Saturn , UranusandNeptune — were carry . And around 4.5 billion years ago , the smaller , rocky planet — Mercury , Venus , Earth andMars — took build , according toThe Planetary Society .
But when the planet were born , their eye socket around the sun were not the same as they are today ( especially those of the elephantine major planet ) . For around 100 million yr after the first major planet form , there was a " dynamic unstableness " among them , which result in a gravitative jerk - of - state of war between these large bodies and caused the sleep of the outer solar system ’s planetary material , and even some emerging protoplanets , to be sling out of the solar system , Sean Raymond , an astronomer at the Bordeaux Astrophysics Laboratory in France and an expert on world-wide systems , told Live Science in an email .
The orbital period of the solar system’s planets varies widely.
However , once all of the planets had emerged and finish jostle with one another for their positions , theysettled into consistent , stable orbitsthat have n’t change much since .
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Earth has made roughly 4.5 billion trips around the sun since it was created.
— What if Earth shared its sphere with another planet ?
" For 98 % to 99 % of the solar system ’s life , the planets ' orbits have been nice and stable , " Raymond say . As a resolution , you’re able to use the planet ' current orbital dynamics to make a pretty exact guess at how many trip they have made around the sun , he added .
Take Earth , for good example . Our planet takes a year to orb the sun and has existed for 4.5 billion years , so it has taken close to 4.5 billion trip around the solar system .
However , the number of total orbits varies greatly among the other planets because their years are either short or longer than Earth ’s .
Mercury , the stuffy planet to the sun , pick out only 88 days ( or around 0.24 years , based on a year with 365.25 days ) to go around the Dominicus once . So , over the retiring 4.5 billion years , it has completed around 18.7 billion solar electron orbit . But Neptune , the farthest major planet from the sun , fill around 60,190 day ( or 164.7 year ) to make out an orbit , which mean it has managed only about 27.9 million trips around the sun during its 4.59 billion years of existence . That means Mercury has orbited the sun around 18.7 billion meter more than Neptune has .
Here is the full list of the planets , theiryear lengthand their total turn of trips around the sun :
These strait like telling numbers ( and they are ) but most of the planets could potentially double their number of orbit in their remaining lifetimes .
In around 4.5 billion years , the sun will haveswollen outward to pass Earth ’s orbitand transition into a ruddy dwarf star topology , which will destroy Mercury , Venus and Earth . The other planets may live on for a time if they are not sunburn up but their orbits will likely be majorly altered .
